Radiation-Tainted Beef Raises Safety Concern in Japan

By Aya Takada -
Jul 14, 2011

(Corrects beef export figure in eighth paragraph.)

Beef contaminated by radiation from
Fukushima prefecture has been eaten by consumers in Japan,
intensifying food-safety concerns and stoking criticism against
a government testing program that checks only selected products.

About 437 kilograms (963 pounds) of beef from a farm in
Minami-Soma city, 30 kilometers from the stricken Fukushima Dai-
Ichi nuclear station, was consumed in eight prefectures,
according to the Tokyo metropolitan government, which detected
the first case of tainted beef from the farm earlier this month.

Four months after a record earthquake and tsunami crippled
the power plant in Fukushima, site of the worst nuclear disaster
since Chernobyl, local government offices are struggling to
check every farm product due to a shortage of testing equipment,
staff and budget. Prolonged exposure to radiation in the air,
ground and food can cause leukemia and other cancers, according
to the London-based World Nuclear Association.

“The government’s mishandling of the issue is deepening
food-safety concerns,” Susumu Harada, senior director at the
U.S. Meat Export Federation’s Tokyo office, said in an
interview.

Products including spinach, mushrooms, bamboo shoots, tea,
milk, plums and fish have been found to be contaminated with
cesium and iodine as far as 360 kilometers from Dai-Ichi. Tokyo
Electric Power Co., operator of the stricken station, said June
14 it found cesium in milk tested near another nuclear reactor
site about 210 kilometers from the damaged plant.

Tainted Straw

The cattle ate tainted straw amid a feed-supply shortage
after the March disaster, which damaged feed plants in the
nation’s northeast. The local government detected 75,000
becquerels of cesium a kilogram in straw stored in the farmer’s
rice field, exceeding the official standard of 300 becquerels.

Beef from the farm contained 2,300 becquerels of cesium a
kilogram, according to the July 8 statement from the government
office of Tokyo, which operates Japan’s largest meat market. The
government set the limit at 500 becquerels of cesium a kilogram.

Japan imported 204,543 tons of beef in the five months
ended May 31, rising 11 percent from the same period last year,
according to the agriculture ministry.

Checking System

There’s no centralized checking system for radioactive
contamination of food as voluntary tests are conducted by
prefectural governments in cooperation with local farmers.

A slaughterhouse in Tokyo detected the contamination after
it received 11 cattle from the Fukushima farm. It also
slaughtered five animals from the farm in May and June, which
were already sold to distributors and partially consumed, said
Kazuyuki Hashimoto at the food-monitoring division of the Tokyo
government office.

About 1.44 tons of beef from the Fukushima farm was sold in
11 prefectures comprising Tokyo, Kanagawa, Aichi, Hokkaido,
Tokushima, Kochi, Shizuoka, Chiba, Osaka, Hyogo and Akita. Of
the total, 437 kilograms were consumed in the prefectures
excluding Chiba, Akita and Hyogo, Hashimoto said.

The Fukushima government office plans to check all cattle
farms in the prefecture to find out if any of them gave
contaminated material to their animals, Hidenori Ohtani at the
livestock division said yesterday by phone.

Agriculture Minister Michihiko Kano told reporters on June
12 that the ministry wants to help Fukushima conduct thorough
testing of cattle for radiation.